Orange Adds Tax To Clean South Trail

Three Orange County commissioners on Monday ignored a roomful of opposition and imposed a special tax on property owners to clean up South Orange Blossom Trail.

The plan to spruce up the tough area of town is the first in almost 15 years to win backing from commissioners.

''This has been studied, studied and restudied,'' said Commissioner Vera Carter, who urged fellow commissioners to approve the plan to raise $7 million for a cleanup.

''We don't need them studying. We don't need more taxes,'' quipped property owner Horace Wilder, who said his taxes already are too high.

In other business,commissioners ordered emergency reprinting of about 6,000 ballots to be mailed to absentee voters on letting money from the proposed local option sales tax be spent on mass transit.

Here are the details:

-- The Trail: Property owners along the Trail will pay $1 for every $1,000 of taxable value. The owners of businesses and property zoned for multifamily dwellings in a jagged area just off the Trail between Interstate 4 and the Bee Line Expressway will pay 30 cents for every $1,000 of property value. The tax will last 15 years.

Only three commissioners -- Carter, Linda Chapin and Hal Marston -- attended the public hearing. Carter and Chapin had voted last December to approve an earlier version of the proposed taxing district but were shot down by Marston, Tom Dorman and Lou Treadway. On Monday, Treadway was in San Francisco at a seminar and Dorman was attending a seminar in Cincinnati.

Property owner David Siegel of Central Florida Investments called the vote a ''kangaroo court,'' and suggested postponement until all five commissioners could attend. Carter, who was chairman of meeting in Treadway's absence, said both men knew the issue would be on the agenda.

Siegel also protested that the property owners were placed in ''double jeopardy,'' because they defeated a nearly identical plan last year.

Originally, the Orange Blossom Trail Development Board wanted to tax a wide area of property owners to raise $10.6 million to bury utility lines, put arches covered with advertising over the road, install covered bus shelters, build decorative walls and buy street furniture.

The scaled-down version cut homeowners out of the taxing district and eliminated the arches and much of the underground wires.

Orange Blossom Trail board member Gerald Hardage said board members ''backed off'' a widespread underground utilities plan when they learned that business owners would have to pay for it in addition to the tax. Now, he said, utilities will be buried only at intersections. The project is to be done in conjunction with the state's plan to widen the Trail to six lanes beginning in 1990.

Some of the 50 people at Monday's meeting who opposed the plan accused the board of rigging a survey of property owners to show support for the tax. Most didn't want to pay the extra taxes, or thought that taxpayers countywide should be assessed.

''My taxes would go up 10 percent. That is just too much for something like this,'' said John Gibson, representing Southland Executive Park.

''Ask the state for some funding,'' urged Barbara Scott, another property owner.

''We don't need a taxing district to tell us how to run our business,'' said former Orlando city commissioner Bill Ankney, president of Ankney Properties.

Randall Grief, executive director of the Trail board, said the tax will be imposed in November 1988. Meanwhile, the board may ask the county for a short-term loan to pay a consultant to work with the state Department of Transportation to design the project.

All three commissioners voted for the measure, but vowed to use some general tax money to increase the pot for the cleanup. Marston voted against the original proposal. He said it taxed too many people.

Carter said she owns a lot on 35th Street in the taxing district that surrounds the Trail. She said she did not believe she had a conflict of interest but said she would file a conflict form after several property owners questioned her about the matter. She said the she would not benefit financially from the taxing district and felt free to vote.

Proponents of the cleanup hope to change the character of the 4 1/2 miles of crowded roadway, which is mostly industrial and commerial by day. At night, however, prostitutes station themselves at stop lights and the adult entertainment establishments open.

-- Local option sales tax: The absence of two commissioners allowed two others to boost a proposal to use some proposed local option sales tax money for mass transit onto the Nov. 3 ballot.

''We didn't pull a sneaky,'' said Carter, who said commission chairman Treadway, who opposes the use of the money for mass transit, knew that the proposal might come up.